Like I Needed More Reasons to Hate New York

In case any of you missed it, I generally hate New York.  Not the state, mind you, or the actual city of New York itself.  I have been to the big apple many times and have loved every second of the city itself.  My main source of hatred for NYC is more/less because of the sports fans that life there.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Katie, you’re the most annoying Boston sports fan on the planet.  You hate anyone who wears pin stripes and you always point out to them that the Yankees suck.  You hate the Manning sisters.  You start every sports debate with a “true or false” question which will inevitably contain a massive PWN for the other person.  You even sign onto NFL.com on Monday mornings to send some seemingly innocent defensive linemen that sacks Tommy the day before hate emails.   Yeah, and your point is?

Anyways, this past week, I made the obvious trek up to MA to visit my family for the joyous holiday of Christmas.  I have a new strategy of leaving Maryland around 7:00 pm, so that by the time I hit the NJ Pike, it’s about 8:30 and NY somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00.  Because, hey, who is going to be on the George Washington Bridge at 11:00 pm on a Tuesday?

Everyone.  This was my view for an entire hour, over which I covered about 2 miles:

Really people?  REALLY???
For anyone who has never driven the lovely I-95 corridor up the eastern coast of the United States, it pretty much works like this:  You usually have 3 or 4 lanes in the areas that are outside each major city, where the speed limit averages 65 (or, 80 if you’re Elmo.  I can’t help it, that Subaru likes hauling an insane amount of ass).  Then, as you approach each city, the speed limit will drop to 55, and your 4-lane highway inevitably becomes 2 or 1, depending on whether or not there is construction going on.  Since no one works for crap around here, there is almost ALWAYS the same construction going on in every single city.  I have been going up/down 95 for the past DECADE and just in the past year or so is there FINALLY no construction going on in Delaware.  Took them about 8.5 years to do construction on 8 whopping miles of highway.  Yeah.  So,  95 pretty much runs THROUGH each major coastal city as well, and starting in Baltimore, there are toll booths everywhere.  I think the budgets in MD, DE, NJ and NY are balanced by how hardcore they can financially rape their motorists.  It costs me about 30 bucks to drive the 398 miles from Towson, MD to Baldwinville, MA, and I don’t pay any tolls for the last 120 of those miles.  Yeah.  Actual Break-down:

Toll Leaving MD: 5 Dollars
Toll Entering DE: 4 Dollars
To Use the New Jersey Turnpike: 10 Dollars
George Washington Bridge: 8 Dollars
Toll Leaving NY: 1.75 Dollars
Cost of Financial Rape: $28.75

NYC is no exception to this toll booth rule and it’s high amount of fails.

You’ll be driving along 95 north going 65 and then BAM!  Just as you exit Maryland, your 4-lanes turns into a toll booth where the IQ is obviously going to drop exponentially from about an average of 90 to 55.  It’s at this point, when people are posed with a choice as to which lane to use, where there is mass chaos, slamming of brakes, and an unavoidalbe back up of no less than 2 miles.

So, NYC, being a city of about what? 8 billion people? is the perfect example of how you shouldn’t pick the lowest bidder in terms of civil engineering and city highway planners.  You’ve just hauled ass up 126 miles of New Jersey Turnpike, 4 lanes of awesome where everyone is doing about 78.7 mph, and then the highway splits into “upper level” of the bridge or “lower level”.  Of course, this is not immediate.  It queues you up about 5 miles out, causing the said “choice” that people have to make.  The upper level is usually reserved for trucks, busses and large vans, but any smart driver knows that you always do the truck lane/level because statistically, there are fewer accidents.

So me, being the experienced 95-er, because I take this trip 1/2 a dozen times a year, takes the left to the upper level.  Bad call, Katie.  Without warning, stopped.  Dead stopped for about 10 minutes.   Accident?  Nope.  Bridge-jumper?  Nope.   Why?  The toll booth.

The toll booth that sits right before the George Washington Bridge is quite the engineering fail.  You have 3 lanes that go into the bridge and then you go around a sharp turn to the left and BAM!  there you are at the toll booth area, which has 3 EZ-Pass lanes on the far left and 8 or so lanes for cash/everyone else.  So, what happens, is all the cash lanes get backed up because people inevitably give a 100 dollar bill for an 8 dollar toll and the EZ Pass people are not able to get over to the EZ Pass lanes.  Then, you have cars, busses and trucks FLYING out of the toll booth back onto three VERY skinny lanes to go over the bridge.

I want to punch the person who was the brain surgeon behind that operation right in the face.

Then, to add to the snarky NY attitude, we get this as you exit the toll booths, but right as you get onto the bridge.

Even the sign itself is a fail.

Thanks for the tip, a-holes.

F this city.